Can we get a policy regarding the ads on Metafilter?

June 19, 2008 7:23 AM

Can we get a policy regarding the ads on Metafilter?

specifically political and advocacy ads? I'm getting banners for pro-life schwag.

I promise I'm not going to complain about banners advertising cereals, alcohol, tampons, cigarettes, ammonium nitrate and the likes but having a banner preach in a way that would get an FP killed seems like a (more or less) cheap endrun courtesy of the federated hucksters.

posted by krautland to Etiquette/Policy at 7:23 AM (71 comments total)

I think mathowie can ask the Googlepeople to keep us from seeing certain ads.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:31 AM on June 19, 2008

Just email me the domains on the ads, and I can block them at the domain level.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:34 AM on June 19, 2008

It's interesting to note that Metafilter's official tolerance level for ads lies somewhere between "Suicide Girls" and "Vote Pro-Life".
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:44 AM on June 19, 2008 [7 favorites]

mcd - you know that the Suicide Girls ad was a one-off ad direct from the website and the pro-life ad was something that came from Google, right? krautland, you see this banner when you're logged in, too?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:45 AM on June 19, 2008

you see this banner when you're logged in, too?
ah, that's why they suddenly disappeared. (I tried to come up with more examples but failed.)

Just email me the domains on the ads, and I can block them at the domain level.
that's not what I mean. many old-media news organizations have policies by which they don't accept certain ads. I think it's fair to have ads encourage us to visit site xyz or try product abc but when you get to the more or less overt opining/politicking the threshold has been passed for me. buy pro-life t-shirts is another way of saying be pro-life, which is advocacy. we regulate that in FPPs and should do the same in ads. catching one of a time seems inadequate, saying no political advertising to fed media on the other hand...
posted by krautland at 8:00 AM on June 19, 2008

krautland, google's adsense doesn't work like you think it does -- I don't get any say on what I accept, they are automatically generated based on keywords and whatever ads people are buying in a greater pool.

Some ads (not using Google Adsense) are ones I approve and I do turn down a lot of ads (like the suicide girls one, eventually). But with Adsense, it's basically only opt-out after the fact. So any kind of ad could pop up but you can ban certain sites from advertising only after they show up.

Currently I block all scientology ads and a bunch of right-wing swiftboat sites from placing ads here, but they have to pop up first before I can block them. If you tell me the domain on the ad, I can block it and there won't be any more pro-life product ads.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:07 AM on June 19, 2008

Is this a FAQ item yet? "Why am I seeing ads for X? How does MetaFilter determine what kinds of ads are shown?" etc.
posted by Eideteker at 8:15 AM on June 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

google's adsense doesn't work like you think it does
understood. should have caught that, I saw a federated link somewhere on the right and assumed you were dealing exclusively with them. judging from the banner linked above, the url would be hh76.com (I didn't visit it).
posted by krautland at 8:18 AM on June 19, 2008

Is this a FAQ item yet? "Why am I seeing ads for X? How does MetaFilter determine what kinds of ads are shown?" etc.

good idea
posted by caddis at 8:34 AM on June 19, 2008

Awesome. I'll be next on MeFi's payroll as the "Doc Guy". Now if I could just get a 4-digit or lower usernumber...
posted by Eideteker at 8:48 AM on June 19, 2008

If your sensibilities are so delicate that your world is rocked by a banner ad, you probably don't have any business on Metafilter. Besides, that's a really cute baby.
posted by jbickers at 8:56 AM on June 19, 2008

I haven't logged out ever, as far as I can recall, mainly because I have no idea what my password is.

Would it enhance Metafilter revenue if I and other members were to log out and look at the site in all its ad-bedecked glory every once in a while?

I would consider it to be my duty if that were the case.
posted by jamjam at 8:59 AM on June 19, 2008

If you tell me the domain on the ad, I can block it and there won't be any more pro-life product ads.
Does this mean if there's pro-choice ad sites, I can request for those to be blocked, too? Or any political add I disagree with?
posted by jmd82 at 9:03 AM on June 19, 2008

Would it enhance Metafilter revenue if I and other members were to log out and look at the site in all its ad-bedecked glory every once in a while?

The active userbase is a drop in the bucket compared to the teeming unwashed hordes casual non-member readers who hit the site daily. I wouldn't worry about it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:05 AM on June 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Does this mean if there's pro-choice ad sites, I can request for those to be blocked, too? Or any political add I disagree with?

Looks like it. And why not? mathowie doesn't have to grant your request.
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:08 AM on June 19, 2008

How come krautland gets to kill the pro-life ads but I still have to look at the "your job sucks" ones?
posted by timeistight at 9:14 AM on June 19, 2008

Looks like it. And why not? mathowie doesn't have to grant your request.

Agreed. However, my point was more that while it sounds like mathowie's going to grant the initial request, I have to wonder if the same request would be granted from the reverse position, particularly on an issue like abortion?
posted by jmd82 at 9:18 AM on June 19, 2008

If your sensibilities are so delicate
wellfeckyouverymuch, you missed the point entirely.

Besides, that's a really cute baby.
that baby looks like tim russert.

Or any political add I disagree with?
fixed that for you.
posted by krautland at 9:21 AM on June 19, 2008

Or any political ad d I disagree with?
now I fixed it. grmbl.
posted by krautland at 9:22 AM on June 19, 2008

wellfeckyouverymuch, you missed the point entirely.

No I didn't, and jmd82 is right on the money - honestly, would you have complained about a Sierra Club banner?
posted by jbickers at 9:28 AM on June 19, 2008

The key point here is that babies + advertising = no.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:30 AM on June 19, 2008

%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.

127.0.0.1 googlesyndication.com
posted by Dave Faris at 9:36 AM on June 19, 2008

well, I guess it depends on if mathowie agrees with you, is what it comes down to.
posted by boo_radley at 9:42 AM on June 19, 2008

Dave, please, that line completely misses the point. This is about website policy (which I know I don't have any real say over regardless of what goes on here, but discussing policies is what MeTa's for), not ways to get around advertising.
posted by jmd82 at 9:43 AM on June 19, 2008

If you don't see the ad in the first place, there's no chance you'll get upset about it in the second place.
posted by Dave Faris at 9:46 AM on June 19, 2008

"mcd - you know that the Suicide Girls ad was a one-off ad direct from the website and the pro-life ad was something that came from Google, right?"

Yes, I know that.

On one end of the spectrum we have one ad, and at the other end the second. People complained about both, and Matt removed (or blocked) them. Therefore I conclude that "acceptable" ad content lies somewhere in the middle of those two data points.

Plus it's entertaining to have "suicide" and "pro-life" juxtaposed like that.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:50 AM on June 19, 2008

No I didn't, and jmd82 is right on the money - honestly, would you have complained about a Sierra Club banner?

I could have. this specific banner was an example for an advertising category I don't think works in this environment, not the cause I specifically had a problem with. so yes, you did.
posted by krautland at 9:56 AM on June 19, 2008

We added a FAQ entry at the bottom all about advertising on MeFi.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:22 AM on June 19, 2008

KILL IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What?! I'm talkin' about the ad!
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 10:36 AM on June 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

The active userbase is a drop in the bucket compared to the teeming unwashed hordes casual non-member readers who hit the site daily.

Is there somewhere I can go to see these numbers? I'm really curious about the size of MeFi's... well, audience, for lack of a better word.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:08 AM on June 19, 2008

Matt's slides are always really out of focus at the shareholder meetings, so I can't give you exact numbers, but he probably has numbers somewhere. I recall daily traffic being described in terms of millions of page views, but I might have a slipped decimal in there somewhere.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:19 AM on June 19, 2008

unleash the six sigma black belts!
posted by boo_radley at 11:26 AM on June 19, 2008

Can we make MetaTalk members only? And require dinner jackets?

Also, if you're opposed to Pro-Life ads, the best solution would be for you to click on the ads, and not buy anything. Then you're increasing Metafilters income, using up the ads impressions so the Pro-Lifers spend more money for less benefit, and you tax their bandwidth. Everyone wins.

EVERYONE.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:39 AM on June 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

Metafilter traffic stats from Alexa.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:41 AM on June 19, 2008

And require dinner jackets?
what's wrong with my outfit?

you only win if they think they lose.
posted by krautland at 11:54 AM on June 19, 2008

That bone marrow baby? Grows up to be this guy.
posted by Deathalicious at 12:06 PM on June 19, 2008

Can we make MetaTalk members only? And require dinner jackets?

Only if we make Members Only jackets required instead of dinner jackets.
posted by deborah at 12:25 PM on June 19, 2008

Matt's slides are always really out of focus at the shareholder meetings, so I can't give you exact numbers, but he probably has numbers somewhere.

Perhaps you should try moving the doughnut out of the way.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:47 PM on June 19, 2008

Oh wah. Just don't buy the pro life schwag. The world is full of people who think differently than you. Perhaps you should get accustomed to it.
posted by xmutex at 12:58 PM on June 19, 2008

"Matt's slides are always really out of focus at the shareholder meetings..."

Perhaps the agenda should be shuffled so that the cocktails come after the slide show.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:13 PM on June 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Besides, that's a really cute succulent, tender and delicious baby.

Fixed that for you.

There's only one really good use for a new baby, and that's making those photographs of the baby in a huge stock pot or baking dish surrounded by vegetables. The world needs more of those pictures. If you have a 6-12 month old baby you need to do this before your baby gets too tough, gamey big.
posted by loquacious at 1:14 PM on June 19, 2008 [3 favorites]

krautland, google's adsense doesn't work like you think it does -- I don't get any say on what I accept, they are automatically generated based on keywords and whatever ads people are buying in a greater pool.

You know, there are some companies out there that feed ads and allow you to place preferences, and say no or yes to specific content types in advance...

disclaimer: I may work for one of those companies
posted by davejay at 1:16 PM on June 19, 2008

But for how long, hmmmm?
posted by timeistight at 1:22 PM on June 19, 2008

Indeed, sir, indeed.
posted by davejay at 2:10 PM on June 19, 2008

as someone who didn't have to pay a dime to join and who's very, very grateful to Matt for everything he's done, I'd be glad to see ads for Pregnant Suicide Girls Who Chose Not To Have An Abortion. unless Matt starts running ads for Elephant Viagra with erected elephantine dicks entering elephantine Goatses, I'll never complain. that's my tolerance level.
posted by matteo at 5:24 PM on June 19, 2008

(ymmv, of course).
posted by matteo at 5:25 PM on June 19, 2008

I'm really curious about the size of MeFi's... well, audience, for lack of a better word.

On a randomly sampled Tuesday this March, mathowie said that daily unique visitors was just shy of a quarter million. There are only something like 10K active accounts, if I recall, and certainly nowhere near all of us are hitting the site daily, so figure that every day maybe 248,000 non-members read something on the site? I'm just guessing, but I assume that given MeFi's awesome Google presence, the majority of traffic comes by way of organic search, is not return traffic, and just generates a pageview or two per visitor. I wonder at the size of the loyal lurker audience, though. There's probably a healthy number of those poor bastards who read the site regularly but don't know the joys of favorites or recent activity pages.
posted by mumkin at 5:44 PM on June 19, 2008

I must be completely immune to internet advertising, because I didn't even realize that Metafilter had ads.
posted by Stylus Happenstance at 5:50 PM on June 19, 2008

As long as the FAQ is being amended, why not add vacapinta to this one?
posted by carsonb at 5:57 PM on June 19, 2008

Good idea, done.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:14 PM on June 19, 2008

"...certainly nowhere near all of us are hitting the site daily..."

Slackers, the lot of 'em. I try to hit the site every four or five minutes to make up for it.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:08 PM on June 19, 2008

This place has ads? Shit, you're looking at the wrong stuff on MeFi!
posted by not_on_display at 9:49 PM on June 19, 2008

Is there a reason why people don't have Adblock Plus installed into Firefox? Seeing ads is for clueless noobs.

Of course, if you aren't using Firefox.. well, you get what you deserve.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 10:25 PM on June 19, 2008 [2 favorites]

consider this an ad for noscript
posted by hortense at 10:36 PM on June 19, 2008

If Metafilter has the opportunity to take money out of the hands of pro-lifers, I'm perfectly happy to see an ad on the subject. If click-through for revenue is required it would probably be counterproductive though.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:46 PM on June 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

> I wonder at the size of the loyal lurker audience, though.

Me too. I personally lurked for six years before joining. I'm shy.
posted by sdodd at 1:33 AM on June 20, 2008

So, somewhat off-topic, but I just followed the link from the FAQ to Federated Media and saw these statistics:

Audience:

* 67% male
* 78% 18-39
* 32% HHI above $75k
* 29% managers or above
* 35% IT professionals, developers or engineers
* 47% publish their own blog

Is that really possible, that 47% of Metafilter publishes their own blog? Or is that just calculated by if we have homepage links? (I wasn't surprised by the IT professionals statistic, but that seems off too)
posted by bertrandom at 4:24 AM on June 20, 2008

I seem to remember Matt asking people to volunteer to fill out an online questionnaire at some point.
posted by Dave Faris at 4:31 AM on June 20, 2008

Yup, yup, nope, yup, nope, kinda.
posted by box at 7:49 AM on June 20, 2008

I publish several blogs, so technically I'm better than most some of you. Most of the blogs have 2 posts or less. How do you like them statistics?
posted by blue_beetle at 10:00 AM on June 20, 2008

krautland writes "that baby looks like tim russert."

Happens all the time.
posted by krinklyfig at 10:29 AM on June 20, 2008

Is there a reason why people don't have Adblock Plus installed into Firefox? Seeing ads is for clueless noobs.

Of course, if you aren't using Firefox.. well, you get what you deserve.

In Opera, I don't need a fancy plugin to block ads. Amature.
posted by inigo2 at 11:18 AM on June 20, 2008

Too bad Opera doesn't have a spell-checker.
posted by Dave Faris at 12:05 PM on June 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

I'm embarrassed to admit that I just figured out that Opera will run greasemonkey scripts, and has for the last 1.5 versions.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:55 PM on June 20, 2008

Suggestion:

Now they all watch the flagged posts pile up, delete questionable posts, occasionally post to the sideblog, and settle any disputes that might arise, and fight crime.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:56 PM on June 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Now they all watch the flagged posts pile up, delete questionable posts, occasionally post to the sideblog, and settle any disputes that might arise, and fight crime.

I actually encourage many crimes and am off to commit one [or two] right now, so that may not be strictly accurate.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:55 PM on June 21, 2008

Referencing this, and I will note that one may be like Batman and fight moral crimes even while committing legal crimes.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 7:37 PM on June 21, 2008

I enjoyed my crimes. How is everyone else doing?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:27 PM on June 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

Enjoying high crimes with a certain Ms. D'Meanor
posted by hortense at 5:58 PM on June 22, 2008

Is there a reason why people don't have Adblock Plus installed into Firefox? Seeing ads is for clueless noobs.

well, some people prefer a browser that doesn't use the sucky gecko engine, like safari. some people have pithhelmet installed, which does the same job. some people go out and spend a couple days working at other computers they cannot just install stuff on.

and some people are too presumptious.
posted by krautland at 5:32 PM on June 23, 2008

I enjoyed my crimes. How is everyone else doing?

You're back less than 24 hours later? You're doing it wrong.
posted by deborah at 1:27 PM on June 24, 2008